Backlash against Arizona anti-gay bill

Updated
February 26, 2014 13:45:00

Legislators in the US state of Arizona have passed a bill that would allow hotels and restaurants to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. The bill is now on the Republican Governor's desk ready to be signed into law. But as news of the Arizona bill spread across the country, the backlash has been enormous - not just from gay rights groups, but from some of the biggest corporations in the country.

ELEANOR HALL: To the United States and a shocking move there to discriminate against gay people.

Legislators in the US state of Arizona have passed a bill that would allow hotels and restaurants to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds.

The bill is now on the Republican governor's desk ready to be signed into law.

But as news of the Arizona bill spreads across the country, the backlash has been enormous - not just from gay rights groups, but from some of the biggest corporations in the country, as North America correspondent Ben Knight reports.

CROWD CHANTING: Ten-sixty-two, shame on you. 1062, shame on you.

BEN KNIGHT: Arizona Senate bill 1062 is supposed to be about enshrining religious freedom in the state, to allow people to able to live and work according to their religious faith.

At least that's how it's described by its supporters - people like Douglas Napier from the conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom.

DOUGLAS NAPIER: This bill is about protecting people who want to freely live out their faith in business and the government can't coerce them to violate their conscious as a condition of being in business.

BEN KNIGHT: The bill's backers say it will protect people of faith from being sued if they act according to their beliefs. For example a doctor who refuses to perform an abortion.

But so far, none of the backers can cite any other example of where religious freedom might be at risk in Arizona.

Instead, the bill's opponents say it has a very different motive - to allow anyone in business the right to refuse service to the gay community or anyone else for that matter, anyone they object to on so-called religious grounds.

DEAN SHAPIRO: Frankly, this bill terrifies me.

BEN KNIGHT: Rabbi Dean Shapiro was one of those protesting outside the state capitol this week.

DEAN SHAPIRO: It means that Native American people could be turned away from hotels or restaurants, that I could be turned away for wearing a Kippah or reading the Torah.

BEN KNIGHT: It's not as though Arizona would be the first US state to pass such a bill, but it has struck a nerve nationally at a time when American views on gay rights are changing very quickly.

This year, for the first time, polls show that a majority of Americans do support the right of same sex couples to get married and they can now do so freely in 17 states - that's a number that is only likely to grow.

Gay rights are still a tricky area though for conservative politicians. But if this bill is to be vetoed - and it now appears that it almost certainly will be - it won't be ideology that killed it instead it will be at the hands of some of the Republican Party's biggest supporters.

GLENN HAMER: Virtually now every major business group in the state of Arizona has come out in support of the governor vetoing 1062.

BEN KNIGHT: That's Glenn Hamer who heads the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and he's not the only one. Seriously big companies like Apple Computers, Marriott Hotels, and American Airlines have also stated their opposition.

The National Football League is even hinting it may pull next year's Super Bowl out of Arizona if this bill becomes law and that's not an empty threat. The NFL took the Super Bowl off Arizona once before. That was back in 1993, when the state refused to make Martin Luther King Day a holiday.

Both of Arizona's Republican senators, including the former presidential candidate John McCain, say the Bill should be killed off.

JOHN MCCAIN: This is going to hurt the state of Arizona's economy and frankly our image so I hope that the governor of Arizona will veto this and we move on.

BEN KNIGHT: The state's governor Jan Brewer has given little away about what she plans to do, but when even politicians who voted for this bill are now calling on her to kill it off, her choice is getting easier by the day.

BOB WORSLEY: It's a bill that is a solution to a problem that did not exist and we just need to stop doing that down here.